The Virgin’s Secret Marriage: Post 17

Chapter 13: Seriously, who monograms their thongs?

(Posts for the foreseeable future may be a bit brief and slapdash. Sincere apologies—it’s been a heck of a few months and the Commissioner is digging her way out of them.)

We’re in the home stretch—this is the second-to-last chapter in The Virgin’s Secret Marriage—which means, of course, that while obviously Emma and Joe will have their Happily Ever After, something terrible has to happen first. As you might guess, it’s all, frankly, less exciting than a climax—of any sort—should be.

Chapter thirteen opens on the Subplot Marriage, and the Subplot Bride is deeply concerned that something bad is going to happen, and while Emma doesn’t agree out loud, she is worried too. Readers, of course, know that with only two chapters left and novels’ penchant for bad things happening at the worst possible time, that it’s likely that the Subplot Groom will be arrested for STEALING ALL THE THINGS. 

… which is exactly what happens when Mac-the-Sheriff shows up. The Subplot Groom saves everyone a great deal of time and confesses almost immediately (Miranda rights be damned).

So… naturally… the Subplot (Ex)Bride’s incredibly irritating mother blames Emma for allowing the sheriff to enter the Wedding Inn and arrest the Subplot Groom, then threatens to sue the Inn and Emma and refuses to pay for anything, until the Subplot (Ex)Bride’s father points out that actually it’s a good thing that their daughter isn’t marrying a criminal.

The cancellation of the marriage ceremony means that Emma goes home early, albeit after feeding many of the wedding guests in what must have been one of the most awkward non-weddings ever. When she arrives home, she finds Joe looking guilty, “as if he’d just been caught in the act of she didn’t know what” (180). Again, readers know that he was setting up his Grand Seduction (the one he planned with his sister in the previous chapter), but because this couple’s marriage is based on LIES and propaganda, Emma finds the fact that he’s stripping the bed to be suspicious. Joe confesses to (now underprepared) Grand Seduction and Emma fills him on Aborted Wedding/Arrest, then they decide to be romantic. Joe goes off to prepare her a bath, and Emma decides to change into sexy lingerie.

Except! What’s this?! Gasp! Horror!

And that was when she looked down and saw the hint of leopard-print satin and black frothy lace peeking out from beneath Joe’s pile of clothes (182).

Oh, but it gets worse. Not only is this not Emma’s thong, but it’s quickly obvious whose it is.

Front and center of the lingerie was an embroidered black heart with the initials T.F.  The only T.F. Joe knew was Tiffany Lamour (182).

So, Lamour is her stage name? I don’t remember that ever being specified in the book, but I’m willing to admit that this could be my fault as opposed to the writing.

My first reaction is “Who monograms their underwear?!” However, now that I’ve moved to the south, I have learned that monogramming is very popular. I cannot speak to the popularity of monogramming thongs, however.  A VERY quick Google search suggests that once you get past the kind of iron-on CafePress personalized thongs, the next step is getting your thong personalized for wearing under your wedding dress. Other than bridal lingerie, the search turned up options via Etsy (the art/craft sales site) and of course many sites for personalizing what Americans call flipflops but Australians call thongs.

This 30 second Google search did not turn up anything like what’s described in the book, but I will not say that it’s impossible or even necessarily unlikely because I just don’t know and don’t want to spend more time googling it.

My second reaction was, “Gee, Tiffany, don’t you think going with the embroidered pair is overdoing it?” I mean, it’s so on-the-nose as to seem suspicious. But then I remembered what I was reading.

So Emma accuses Joe of sleeping with Tiffany in order for her to go easy on him in the interview. Joe tells her that he didn’t. He does NOT however explain about Tiffany asking to use the bathroom and disappearing into their house the previous day. In fact, I don’t think he’d ever told Emma about Tiffany’s visit. Despite not providing a logical explanation, such as the truth that the readers are privy to, Joe just gives up.

I have a whole bunch of things highlighted in this section because I just don’t understand the direction this goes. Joe feels hurt because of Emma’s “lack of faith” (183). Then he realizes that the ruse “had pointed out a glaring lack in his relationship with his bride” (184), meaning that she doesn’t trust him.

He glared at Emma, frustrated that he hadn’t let himself see this coming, when he had known as along, that she was more of a good time gal and fair-weather friend than a devoted wife who would endure anything to be with him (184, comma error original).

What. The. Hell.

First, I do not think “good-time gal” means what you think it means. I was under the impression it meant someone who is particularly interested in, well, having a good time, but specifically sex. I looked it up online and it apparently does mean that, connotatively, and denotatively means what it sounds like— a woman more interested in pleasure than work. However, neither of those meanings makes any sense for Emma. She’s not the former, since she’s the novel’s titular virgin, and she’s not the latter since she has worked very hard for her career (when she could have just been pampered by her parents’ fortune.) I think the text is using it more as a synonym for “fair-weather friend,” someone who is only a companion during the good times and not the hard.

Second, vocabulary, outdated slang, and comma errors aside, why the hell should either of them trust each other? Their marriage is built on lies—granted lies to the rest of the world, but still. And they NEVER talked about making this a “real” marriage—as far as they’ve conveyed to each other, the expectation was that they’d get divorced in two years. So why would Emma be a “devoted wife”?

Third, “devoted wife who would endure anything to be with him”??? That smacks of such antiquated sexism. I assume the writer didn’t mean it that way and that Joe thinks he’d be there through thick and thin because of his love for Emma, but that’s not how it comes across. Not to mention, since he doesn’t even try to explain what he knows happened, it doesn’t really suggest he’s being there for her, either.

Emma’s reasoning for believing that Joe would have slept with Tiffany is that Joe put his career ahead of Emma in the past. Now, if we take that at face value, fine, okay, that makes (some) sense. But if you recall, back in chapter 9, Emma calls Joe’s choice to annul (albeit unsuccessfully) their marriage “noble”, and that he could have actually leveraged their marriage into a spot on the Storm, thus improving his career prospects. If we’re to believe this reading of their history, then he has, in fact, not put his career ahead of Emma.

Since what happened seven years before and how these two characters view it is fundamental to the entire rest of this book, I just really wish that the text was clear as to those events and the characters’ motivations and interpretations.

This scene drags on. Next Joe feels sorry for himself because Emma doubts him, just like everyone else in his life has always doubted him, from his mother to his coaches to sports columnists. Poor baby, playing successfully in the NHL.

Emma declares that Joe has destroyed what trust they’d had, and Joe’s response is to just fold in on himself and say that he’ll have his lawyer call hers. (I wonder if his sports lawyer takes care of divorces? He’s not very good at lawyering in general, though.)

The next day, Joe’s mother asks him to do yardwork at the Wedding Inn as a thinly-veiled excuse to question him as to what’s going on. (She’d seen Joe’s car at his sister’s house overnight and discovered that Emma had slept in her office.) Joe spills all, declaring that this sort of thing happens to athletes and if Emma can’t handle it, then that’s her problem.

(I’m not sure if the text means that athletes get propositioned a lot or that athletes get accused of sex they didn’t have a lot. The former I believe, but also believe Emma could get over, in time. The latter seems less likely to be a consistent and recurring problem.)

Joe’s mother accuses him of quitting, even if Emma let him down. Joe points out that if Emma loved him, he’d be willing to work things out but that this experience proves she doesn’t. Joe’s mama uses his hockey career and work ethic against him, pointing out that he worked his ass off and put his mind to it to get a successful professional career against the odds, because he knew it was the right thing to do.

“Like you knew when you were only nineteen that Emma was the only woman for you,” Helen said (190).

Uh, what? First off, Helen wasn’t around for any of Joe’s relationship with Emma seven years before. It took place in Rhode Island and the text explicitly said that the Hart family was unaware of it. That means that Helen would have found out that Joe “just knew” some time in the last week or so, while the two have been (re)married. But when would have that have happened? Joe’s only conversation with his mother about Emma was when she gave him the (now stolen and recovered) hockey memorabilia as an excuse to tell him that he has to treat Emma right.

Soooooo, Joe’s mother is a psychic. Or is just making stuff up—because the text has never even had JOE HIMSELF say that at nineteen he knew that Emma was the one. Yeah, he’s been unable to forget her and yeah, seeing her again has rekindled his love, but again the text has not indicated that he’s been unable to find someone new because Emma was the one. (The text has indicated this obliquely about Emma, saying that she unfavorably compared anyone who approached her to Joe.)

This magic speech, which makes zero sense once you think about it further, does the trick for Joe. He learns that he must devote himself to his marriage, just like he devoted himself to his career, and stick with her.

Ugh.

Well, stick with the Fictional Hockey League, since there’s just one more chapter of The Virgin’s Secret Marriage to go.

The Virgin’s Secret Marriage: Post 16

Chapter 12: Twisted Logic

(Posts for the foreseeable future may be a bit brief and slapdash. Proofreading? Revising? What are those?! Sincere apologies—it’s been a heck of a few months and the Commissioner is digging her way out of them.)

WhatisthisIdon’teven… ::takes a deep breath:: Let me try this again.

In many ways, almost nothing happens in this chapter, and yet it’s almost 20 pages and this post is (probably) going to be long.

Actual actions that occur in this chapter:

•  Joe asks Emma why she’s calling his brother
• Emma eventually explains
• Sex
• Tiffany Lamour inexplicably shows up at the house
• Joe’s interview with Tiffany happens off stage
• Emma oversees the rehearsal dinner cleanup
• Tiffany shows up to give a tape of the interview to Emma and Joe
• Sex
• Emma’s mother worries about the interview and hints that Joe might have slept with Tiffany
• Joe helps his sister bring wedding cakes to the Inn

Okay, that’s actually quite a few actions, but none of them are what you’d call particularly exiting in and of themselves. And that’s actually how the whole chapter feels… mundane tasks take more time than they ought and an awful lot of (digital) ink is spilled attempting what I’m pretty sure is just misdirection.

Let’s take it step by step, shall we? (Oh, we shall. We shall.)

• Joe asks Emma why she’s calling his brother
• Emma eventually explains 

Joe decides that Emma is guilty, regarding this phone call. She explains that she was calling Mac in a professional capacity since she had an idea about who might be behind the thefts.

“And you didn’t tell me?” Joe groused, aware this would have been good news had he not had to drag it out of her, and then only after catching her confiding in someone else. Who, by the way, was not her husband! (158).

First, if you’re her husband and she’s not confiding in you, then that whole last bit up there, Mr Joe Hart, hockey player extraordinaire, is redundant.

Second, and more importantly, this book seems to suggest that while the two of them (re)married for convenience, to let gossip die down, that it’s magically a marriage where all Traditional Beliefs have to stand—and these two haven’t even discussed what those beliefs would be for them. I see far less reason for Emma to confide in Joe than for her to not confide in Joe.

Emma eventually admits that she thinks the Thieving Mastermind is the Subplot Groom. Joe thinks her logic is sound, but is far less interested in getting his priceless and sentimental hockey memorabilia returned than he is hurt that Emma didn’t tell him any of this of her own volition. Emma tries to explain that since she could be wrong, she didn’t want to raise Joe’s hopes, and that she wanted to protect him.

Joe frowned, not sure where to start, she was so out of line here. “Emma—” (159).

Seriously? What year is this book written in? VCRs notwithstanding, I feel like Joe is trying to be a dad from a 1950s sitcom. (In which case he needs to get a haircut like Keith Yandle… said the FHL Commissioner in a joke that no one who reads this blog is likely to get.) 

We miss you, Yandle, and your tic of pulling up your pants
 before every faceoff. (Photo by the FHL Commissioner, 2013) 

• Sex 

Emma points out that she actually knows the rest of Joe’s family better than she knows him, at this point, what with practically all of them working at the Wedding Inn, or stopping by constantly. It creeps me out, however, that during this conversation when Emma is enumerating each of Joe’s siblings and whether she knows them well, Joe is getting turned on. I wish I were kidding, but by the time they get to referencing Joe’s veterinarian brother (who I forgot existed), Joe is aroused and Emma is undressing.

I’m an only child, but I still think that talking about my siblings would be very much passion destroying.

To assuage Joe’s temper-tantrum*, Emma tells him he’s the one in her heart. Later in the chapter, twice in fact, the text will tell us that Joe doesn’t know if Emma loves him, because she’s never said it. But it seems to me that she did just say it, right there, even without the “three little words.” Eejit.

The next morning (after more sex), Emma leaves for the rehearsal day of the Subplot Wedding after being reminded that that evening is also Joe’s interview with Tiffany Lamour, or, as Emma has starting thinking about her, “the female piranha” (161). 

Tell me you wouldn't watch a show with this guy for an interviewer?

• Tiffany Lamour inexplicably shows up at the house 

Think of the devil female piranha and she shows up, apparently, but only after Emma has left for the day.

Tiffany’s behavior is (presumably, deliberately) inexplicable. She starts out wheedling, in order to get into the house. When Joe says he won’t answer any personal questions while on her show that night, she gets aggressive and rude. Then she tries to seduce him by letting “her knees fall open a tad too far” but Joe doesn’t care about her panties.  (Seriously. He says so.)

She remains aggressive and says she’ll ask whatever she damn well pleases during the show and that she can cut the film to make it look like anything she wants. Joe threatens her, saying he’ll just ask her questions, too, like apparently that she was involved in some other, never-before-mentioned athlete’s divorce and almost had to go to court (for unspecified reasons) over it. Last, Tiffany seems to deflate when Joe tells her that he’s bringing his attorney with him to the interview.

“Fine,” Tiffany said grudgingly at last… “We’ll do it your way, Joe, as always” (164).

When has there ever been a previous for this to be an always? Dammit, book, get it together.

Tiffany gives up and asks to use the restroom. Joe doesn’t want to let her (rude, but understandable) but allows it, then she disappears.

• Joe’s interview with Tiffany happens off stage
• Emma oversees the rehearsal dinner cleanup 

The only notable thing that happens here is that because Emma remains uncertain if the Subplot Groom is the hockey memorabilia theft culprit, she likens being the wedding planner for that day’s rehearsal and next day’s ceremony to “presiding over a wedding on the deck of the Titanic” (165). I know the Titanic disaster happened 100+ years ago, but that still seems a little callous in comparison. I mean, the worst thing that could happen at this Carolina wedding (using the book’s plot suggestion) is that it turns out that the Subplot Groom is broke and turned to a life of Really Stupid Crime, potentially in league with Tiffany Lamour, and perhaps he gets arrested during the ceremony. On the Titanic, 1500 people drowned or died of exposure. It’s just a bit different. Plus, Emma is describing a feeling of uncertainty and dread—feelings that the passengers of the Titanic, including any (nonexistent) wedding planners, wouldn’t have had since most of them were convinced that the ship was unsinkable and also they weren’t supposed to be so far north that there would still be icebergs in their path in April.

(Weirdly, I’m currently listening to an audiobook about the Lusitania. Which has nothing to do with anything other than also being a giant passenger ship that sank a few years after the Titanic. And actually, the Lusitania would have made a better metaphor here, since it was sailing during war time and the Germans actually published warnings in the newspapers saying, “Hey, watch out Americans, ‘cause if we can, we’re going to torpedo the Lusitania, with our nifty new-fangled submarines!” which could have engendered a sense of dread, unlike on the Titanic. Icebergs weren’t polite enough to take out advertisements.)

• Tiffany shows up to give a tape of the interview to Emma and Joe 

Yes, I do mean tape, by the way. They use a VCR.

The couple takes the tape home and Emma wants to watch it, but Joe wants sex. Emma worries that the tape contains something other than the interview, like perhaps a sex tape or something.

They compromise in that they start to watch it but get distracted into sex before the tape is over. They don’t see anything to worry them (during the tape. I mean, I presume also not during the sex, but that part isn’t explicitly in the text.)

• Sex 

Also a boring conversation about the fact that Joe isn’t shaving because he thinks the beard is bringing him luck with Emma.

·         Emma’s mother worries about the interview and hints that Joe might have slept with Tiffany

Emma’s mother shows up at the Wedding Inn purely to ask Emma what’s going on; Tiffany gave Emma’s parents a copy of the tape as well and they watched all of it. It contains absolutely nothing about Joe’s private life, which worries Emma’s mother. First, she’s concerned (and hints at) that Joe either paid off Tiffany or slept with her in order to keep her from asking personal questions. Of course this makes Emma worry about this possibility, too, as well as accuse her mother of sending Joe to Tiffany as a kind of morality test.

I don’t like any of the relationships in this book. They’re not healthy.

 Second, Emma’s mother is miffed that this interview won’t put to rest any of the gossip. Which, fair enough, but I also have to believe that the gossip just frankly isn’t that big of a deal. It’s a fluff piece at best. I mean, there are athletes (NHL included) who have been accused (or proven) to have beaten people who are still playing and are still popular. Somehow I think one semi-illicit-but-not-really relationship and secret-accidental marriage is a blip on the radar. But this is apparently an important moment for Emma, because she stands up to her mother and says that she and Joe are going to (from now on, I suppose) keep their private lives private.

So much for that whole Hockey Wife = Role Model = Tell All thing that these two had going on last chapter.

•  Joe helps his sister bring wedding cakes to the Inn

And there’s some conversation about how his sister doesn’t support her son’s desire to play hockey, which makes Joe feel sad because… I’m not sure. Possibly because he feels bad for the kid, but more likely it’s because he feels it demeans his own career choices and reminds him that his own mother didn’t support him the way he’d have liked her to. It’s not spelled out, but that’s the subtext I get, and it’s actually slightly more interesting than just about anything else going on in this book. Joe also asks his sister how he should seduce Emma that night, which I can’t decide if it’s creepy (that’s his sister he’s asking) or sweet (at least he’s not just insisting Emma do things this time.)

Then the wedding starts and the chapter ends. Only 25 pages left in this novel. I sure hope we find out who the thief is and what Tiffany’s fiendish plan might be…

--------------------------

*DIGRESSION TIME! I keep wanting to write that Joe is “butthurt” over this stupidity, because as a term it conveys such petulance and childishness. But I don’t like the term because of its references to sodomy and thus the suggestion that gay penetrative sex is somehow ‘bad’ and thus worthy of being used as a pejorative. Then I considered “panties in a bunch” and “hissyfit”, but of course both of those have feminine conotations. The humor in the former in partly about the gendered term ‘panties’ and thus suggests that only women, or worse, men being called feminine, would have the emotional response in question. The latter, hissyfit, is from the term “hysterical” which was a very specifically female gendered term used by medical practitioners who thought that only women could have specific kinds of emotional, “nervous” complaints, at one point thought to be caused by the uterus wandering about the woman’s body and at various times in history “treated” by stimulating a woman to orgasm.

Language is hard, you guys. And if you’re asking why connotations or language matter, you might be hanging out in the wrong blog.